Topic: Why Prohashing.com is witholding payments ? (Read 146 times)

1099-MISC for and Automatic Withholding for non-us persons.
Postby pavvappav » Mon Jan 01, 2018 8:01 pm

Based on the information on the "1099-MISC" section of the help, the decision to provide 1099 forms to us persons was based on the 2014 guidance from the IRS, specificly Q13 is referenced.

The last sentence of Q13 and the entirety of Q14 cover payment of virtual currencies to contractors who are not us citizens.

The 515 document covers the withholding of taxes for non-resident aliens (non us citizens not living within the US). According to this document, it appears that income from Prohashing paid to non resident aliens is subject to a flat 30% tax unless otherwise reduced by treaty with the nation of the foreign individual.


According to 515:
When to withhold. Withholding is required at the time you make a payment of an amount subject to withholding. A payment is made to a person if that person realizes income, whether or not there is an actual transfer of cash or other property. A payment is considered made to a person if it is paid for that person's benefit. For example, a payment made to a creditor of a person in satisfaction of that person's debt to the creditor is considered made to the person. A payment also is considered made to a person if it is made to that person's agent.
A U.S. partnership should withhold when any distributions that include amounts subject to withholding are made. However, if a foreign partner's distributive share of income subject to withholding is not actually distributed, the U.S. partnership must withhold on the foreign partner's distributive share of the income on the earlier of the date that a Schedule K-1 (Form 1065) is provided or mailed to the partner or the due date for furnishing that schedule. If the distributable amount consists of effectively connected income, see Partnership Withholding on Effectively Connected Income , later.


So, with that said, is Prohashing going to be following US law and withholding the 30% tax on income paid to miners who can not or will not provide their TIN and information for 1099-Misc withholding? And understand, I base this question on the description prohashing has provided in their help, and the documents referenced in Prohashing's help on the 1099-Misc page.

1099-MISC forms
To comply with United States Internal Revenue Service regulations, Prohashing issues 1099-MISC forms to its customers yearly each January. Since we rent hashrate from customers, use it to mine blocks for ourselves, and pay customers a fixed rate for the product they are renting, these forms are required by US law to be distributed to   all customers (who live in the United States or who meet some other conditions) and who earned more than $600 during the previous calendar year.

Prohashing does not withhold any taxes, nor do these forms necessarily mandate the payment of taxes. Prohashing's obligation is solely to generate the forms and mail them by physical mail to qualifying customers. We do not provide advice on how to complete this paperwork or whether you are required to do so; you may want to consult the IRS website, an accountant, or a lawyer for assistance. Some information may be found in this document. The response in answer A-13 is what caused us to decide to mail these forms to US customers. Information about whether international customers qualify as exempt from the paperwork is provided at this site.

If you live in the state of Pennsylvania, you may be sent additional paperwork specific to Pennsylvania. No additional information is required other than that already requested for the IRS forms. Your street address will be used to determine whether this additional paperwork is required. As with the IRS forms, we do not provide tax advice and are simply providing these forms as part of a legal requirement.

To provide information to be included on the 1099-MISC form, visit the "Settings" page and enter the required information. If you wish to declare that you are exempt from receiving a 1099-MISC form, select the option that declares that you are not a US resident and click "Submit."

Address data submitted to the system is archived offline weekly, so any potential hacking in the future will only result in the loss of the most recent data. Because the data is not stored online, it is not possible to display previously submitted data. Instead, we can only display whether a customer has submitted a form or not. If you believe you made a mistake in a previous submission, submit the form again and the previous data will be replaced with the data you just submitted.

Customers who have not earned $600 in a calendar year are not required to submit this information, although they may submit it anyway to ensure prompt payment should they exceed the $600 threshold for form mailing. If information has not been submitted for a customer who crosses the $600 threshold, we reserve the right to withhold payment until the information is received. While we intend to make every effort to pay customers no matter when they submit this information, Prohashing's liability for payments exceeding the $600 yearly threshold for customers who have not submitted information ends 90 days after the threshold was first exceeded.